True North, Chapter One
Getting dumped sucked, even when you weren’t that wild about the guy to start with.
Getting dumped two days before your sister’s wedding, being left dateless… That was an altogether different level of suck.
Sierra Lowell shut the back door of her business harder than she meant to and let out a quiet but heartfelt stream of swear words.
“Everything okay?”
She turned from the door to see Cole North, her foreman, sticking his head into the room.
“Fine,” she said, brushing off the irritation from her personal life and slipping back into business mode. It probably revealed a lot about her relationship—former relationship—that she so easily got her mind back on the subject of her meeting with Cole. “Sorry about the interruption.”
“What did what’s-his-name do to you?”
“How do you know it’s what’s-his-name?”
“You were fine all day, even with the wedding stress. He shows up, you slam the door, I find you swearing a blue streak after him… Are you going to tell me it’s not?”
Cole was the kind of guy who didn’t say too much but who paid attention, sometimes more than she wanted him to. “He screwed me over for a wedding date,” she said.
“He canceled on you?”
“Broke up with me. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if not for Kennedy’s wedding. We were never that serious but had agreed to at least get through the wedding.”
“What changed?”
She blew out a breath as she pulled her ponytail out from under her jacket. “He met someone he really likes. Wants to see her this weekend.”
Cole watched her, assessing, and then he said, “That blows.”
“I’d be okay with it if it didn’t leave me in the lurch for the wedding.”
“Do you really need a date?” he asked skeptically.
Such a guy.
“I really do. My mom is militant about RSVPs and head counts for the hotel caterers. If I don’t show up with a plus one, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
There was more—as the youngest Lowell sibling, Sierra always felt she had to prove herself, in every arena, justified or not, and both her siblings had found their person, were settled or settling, and she was so far from it, it wasn’t funny—but it wasn’t worth going into with Cole. She fully acknowledged it was at least partially in her head, but it wasn’t likely she could resolve twenty-some years of mental crap in the next forty-eight hours.
“Plus there’s the bridal party dance…” She shook her head, realizing how woe-is-me she would sound to admit out loud she didn’t want to be the odd girl out.
“What kind of dance?” Cole said, lowering his bag to the chair he’d been sitting on.
“Just a slow song. Standard partner dance. Nothing special, but it’s a thing.” She looked away, pressed her lips together as she started sorting through options, because the other single attendant—the groom’s brother—was bringing a date, and they’d already decided their dates would join them for the bridal party dance. If Sierra didn’t find someone, she’d either look like a dumb ass out there by herself or be conspicuously absent for that song. She disliked both options.
“It’s Saturday night?” he asked, looking pensive.
“Five thirty. I have”—she picked up her phone and pushed the button to check the time—“forty-seven and a half hours to find someone. I’m not going alone.”
She unlocked her phone, opened her contacts, and was about to tap on her brother’s name, hoping he’d know someone he could set her up with, as pathetic as that was, when Cole said, “I can stand in for your date.”
